BArch/MArch (University of Tehran), MSc (UCL), PhD (UCL)

Overview

Biography

Reza is an architect and urban morphologist, interested in the interaction between society and space with a focus on the broad idea of ritual. He received his PhD from UCL (2009) then was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), Germany (2009-11). Reza’s doctoral dissertation, The Rite of Urban Passage, focused on exploring the social dynamics through the spatial transformation of religious processions in Iranian cities since the 1920s. His project at MPI-MMG, Rituals and Socio-Spatial Negotiations in Mega-Cities, was aimed at exploring rituals in public spaces as one of the mediums by which diverse ethnicities practise social division, intimacy, and integration in Mumbai, India.